UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

“Pinkwashing” is a public-relations strategy used to portray Israel as the only place in the Middle East that is friendly to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people. It relies on a broad-brushed slander of the entire Arab and Muslim world, which is presented as “backward.” It is further based on the egregious lie that the Israeli settler state treats LGBTQ Palestinians as equal to LGBTQ Israelis.

… Another essential component of pro-Israel propaganda is the conflation of Judaism and Jewish identity with the settler state of Israel, a lie which anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, like Jewish Voice for Peace and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, have rejected. This conflation allows Zionists to smear anyone who criticizes Israel as “anti-Semitic,” providing a cover for Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, and erasing the voices and work of Jews worldwide who reject Zionism.

We rise in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, including the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions!The Chicago Pride Parade has a long history of allowing organizations that engage in pinkwashing–the promotion of Israel’s supposed positive record on LGBTQ rights as a means to distract from their brutal crimes against Palestine–to participate in the Parade. The presence of groups like A Wider Bridge, Stand With Us, and the Israeli Consulate General dishonors the legacy of the trans women of color who galvanized our movement. As an explicitly anti-Zionist collective leading an explicitly anti-Zionist coalition which includes Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian organizers, we reject any celebration of the illegal Israeli state in the Chicago Pride Parade. Trans and queer people will not be used as propaganda for a genocidal, settler-colonial state, in an attempt to spread racist and Islamophobic tropes about Palestinian culture. Pinkwashing, Zionism, settler colonialism, and genocide have no place in queer struggle. As a coalition, we proudly join the calls to free Palestine!

There is no “constructive dialogue” to be had about the deliberate genocide of Palestinians, or the detainment of queer and trans people of color. There is nothing good that can come out of the “inclusion” of those who occupy, those who kidnap, those who incarcerate and those who terrorize. As Brown people for Black power, we recognize that the actions and positions of I.C.E. and A Wider Bridge not only affect Palestinians and Latinos, but also affects Afro-Palestinians, Afro-Latinos, and undocumented Black people.